Anyone have a Western Digital MyBook

I have the MyBook Pro (1st generation) and just got a firewire cable to start using the firewire capability on it, however, the drive keeps showing up and missing from "my computer". Is there a driver or something I need to run firewire, because it keeps asking me to register the device with the new hardware wizard. Where can I get the driver to make this startup like a regular hard drive everytime my computer is started and to stop going missing.

 

Does it work in USB mode? I don't know about Mac OS, but on XP my MyBook needed firewire drivers before it would work. The drivers were in the folder on the drive. If you've reformatted or they aren't there, they should be on western digital's site too.

 

Firewire is built into XP, the found new hardware should take care of it.

 

I plugged mine in using firewire and it worked fine. Havent had an issue yet.

 

http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?cxml=n&pid=21&swid=65

Anyone know which is the right driver to download.
Its weird because the drive just turns off and the only way to get it on and connected again is to pull out the power switch, and than put it back in. It worked fine with USB, I just thought firewire was faster and want it to work

 

Bump
I'm still having some issues with this thing. Still haven't figured out which driver to use. Its funny, it was on all day and I didn't access anything from the drive, as soon as I clicked on it, boom, the thing did its spindown and turned off
Never had an issue with any of my externals until this one, and i'm thinking the spin down is not going to be too good for it.

 

Hi there I have 2 MyBook drives 500GB & 750GB. No problem what so ever on XP.SP2 / Vista.
Compal 50, Vaio GRS 515 and Dell M1330XPS. You may have a chip-set issue with you on board controller. Has your Firewire ever worked before?
Are you using a 6 pin to 4 pin cable or 6pin to 6 pin cable?
Ok I see you got a MacBook in your sig test it in there it should be fine for this you will need a 6/6 pin cable. Then go from there.

 

I'm using it with a hpdv6000t which I bought in February. Its a 4 to 6 pin connection. The mybook will be working for a minute, than it will shutdown as if i turned off the computer, while i'm in the middle of using it. This does not happen all the time.
Than, I will press the button to turn on the drive, and it will turn on again, but the drive will not show up on my computer. So I will have to unplug the power cable from the mybook, and put it back in, and than the drive will show up again on my computer. It will randomnly turn off again at some point in the day.

I called Western Digital, they said it might be a bad firewire port on the mybook and wanted to send a refurbished unit, I vouched not to because I just don't trust refurbished products from past experience. I downloaded some drivers, they don't seem to work.

I really don't know what else I can do. There are so many ports available on the mybook pro, its a shame I am stuck to USB 2.0

Is there a WD forum for these types of issues and questions?

 

I looked for forums for WD, all I found was a forum about jobs there
Anyone know a place that talks about external HDs?

 

anyone out there?

 

So I switched to usb 2.0 and it has not disconnected yet. The drive was found and said new hardware installed, something which has not been possible with my firewire cable. Is this a 4 to 6 pin issue?

 

Mine is using the mini-firewire port to full-size.. no problems.

Might be a controller issue or maybe your laptop does not supply enough power through the port. I have run across that problem on multiple laptops while using portable HDD's which can be powered from the USB port. Usually with 120gb or 160gb WD Passport's.

 

Yeah this might be the issue
Is there such thing as a USB hub that can run of a plug outlet instead of your laptop? My laptop should be able to handle it, but if I pass off some other drives on a usb hub, than more power will go to the wd
I switched back to USB and no problems so far, don't understand why firewire is making a fuss.
I do use a portable seagate hd, but can't justify just that one drive as the problem

 

There are lots of powered USB hubs. Most "mini" hubs can be powered or unpowered.